"Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering."
--Rev. Andrew Linzey

Jesus' message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about factory farms and slaughterhouses, where billions of animals live miserable lives and die violent, bloody deaths. Jesus mandates kindness, mercy, compassion, and love for all God's creation. He would be appalled by the degree of suffering we inflict on animals to indulge our acquired taste for their flesh.

Christians have a choice. When we sit down to eat, we can add to the level of violence, misery, and death in the world, or we can respect His creation with a vegetarian diet.

The Garden of Eden, God's perfect world, was vegetarian (Gen. 1:29-30). Immediately, God calls this ideal and non-exploitative relationship "good" (Gen. 1:31). There follow many years of fallen humanity, when people held slaves, waged war, ate animals and committed various other violent acts. But the prophets tell us that the peaceable kingdom will be nonviolent and vegetarian; even the lion will lie down with the lamb (e.g., Isaiah 11). Jesus is the Prince of Peace, who ushers in this new age of nonviolence. When Christians pray, "Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven," the one prayer given to us by Jesus, this obligates us to change our lives, to make choices that are as merciful and loving as possible. There will be no factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven.

God created every animal with the capacity for pain and suffering. But on today's factory farms, animals are dehorned, debeaked, and castrated without anesthesia. To maximize profits, they are crowded together in the least space possible, and are genetically bred, so that most suffer lameness, crippling leg deformities, or bone breaks, because their legs can't keep up with their scientifically enhanced bodies. Finally, they are trucked without food or water, through all weather extremes, to a frightening and hellish death.

A vegetarian diet is good for your health and spares animals unimaginable suffering and violence. Remember: As we do to the least, so we do to Him.

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Originally posted by chocoreality:
you can say just about anything based on the bible if you dont look at it as a whole.. because we all have the right to objectively omit parts of the bible. it is like anything facts are coloured by the people that present them!

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"Why should Biblical verses that show divine approval of animal abuse set an everlasting precedent while passages showing divine approval of the murder of men, woman, and children do not? We cannot justify animal atrocities on the authority of the Bible unless we are also willing to justify human atrocities on the same basis."
-Norm Phelps, from his book The Dominion of Love.
You're right though, a lot of people pick and choose which parts of the bible they'll follow, like all the verses saying that you shouldn't eat pork or scaleless fish or etc. But Christians eat all that stuff anyway.

you can say just about anything based on the bible if you dont look at it as a whole.. because we all have the right to objectively omit parts of the bible. it is like anything facts are coloured by the people that present them!

Woot i'm a strong Christian and i'm a vegitarian

I dont think its right to kill animals!

but hey thats my opinion

I know I posted in the other thread of the same name but I thought I'd just post these websites since Aly88 didn't post any.
www.christianveg.com
www.jesusveg.com
www.all-creatures.org
www.humanereligion.org
www.veg4lent.org
http://www.fund.org/library/documentViewer.asp?ID=640&table=documents
http://hometown.aol.com/arbiblebites

Also, there are several books on this topic out there you can check out.

God's Covenant with Animals: A Biblical Basis for the Humane Treatment of Animals by Rev. J.R. Hyland

Animal Gospel by Rev. Andrew Linzey

The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible by Norm Phelps

The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity by Keith Akers

Christianity and the Rights of Animals by Rev. Andrew Linzey

Try looking for these on www.amazon.com to get an idea of what they're about.

Stop spamming the boards, n00b.

I respect your opinion but I totally disagree with what you're saying. The bible states numerous times when jesus himsself fed food (including meat) to the hungry. Why would he say it's terrible to be a christian and eat meat ehn he himself literally fed meat to christians? You should do a little more resaerch.

You've been horribly mislead.